


World of Our Making

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Identity Porn, M/M, due to the identity porn, kind of steve/bucky but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier isn't Bucky Barnes. But SHIELD needs him to be.</p><p>[No spoilers for the Winter Soldier movie except two tiny references.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	World of Our Making

The footage from the assassination in Madrid in 1997 plays, and Steve leans forward and says, “Freeze it.”

The video stops and Steve whispers, “Oh, my god.”

They’re supposed to be making a shortlist of suspects for the assassination yesterday. Winter Soldier was on the list. This was an informational briefing.

“It’s Bucky,” Steve says. The grainy footage is blurred in place on the screen, and a man’s face is caught in motion, dark sad eyes and an unshaven jaw. “He’s Bucky Barnes. My friend.”

Around the conference table, Natasha and Fury do not look at each other. Natasha does not say that she knew this man who was given the codename Winter Soldier, or that he is the fourth man to be given that codename, or that she knows his real name and it is Alexey. She does not say that he is a former KGB agent who tried to betray his masters in 1989 and was taken into the Red Room as both a punishment and a way of preserving his great skill in the service of his country.

She says nothing because this is the first time in a year that Steve has offered up any opinion at all. Steve has performed his part perfectly in every mission he’s been on since he woke up two years ago, but when he’s not on a mission, Steve goes home and goes to bed. SHIELD surveillance says that for eight months now Steve has been spending all of his free time at his apartment sleeping: eighteen hours a day, sometimes. He has no hobbies, no interests. Sometimes he only wakes to go to SHIELD, work out, then come home. He completes his missions as required, then goes home to sleep. He has a TV that’s never been turned on. He has a laptop that’s never been used. And sometimes, on missions, Natasha wonders just how many times Steve can leap from a plane or run into gunfire and call it bravery.

Steve’s apartment is very clean. Natasha knows, because she’s one of the agents who bugs it and moves the cameras. Steve cleans thoroughly and then goes to bed and sleeps while his laundry’s going.

Steve tells his therapists that the twenty-first century’s not so bad. He has an apartment and a job and a motorbike. He buys groceries every Saturday, milk and eggs and chicken and peas in a can (wow, grocery stores are so big nowadays), and he cooks dinner at night. And this is all true, because Steve is not a liar.

When Steve asks the database to pull up a picture of Bucky Barnes, Natasha thinks, yes, there is a resemblance. Alexey looks like Barnes. He looks very much like Barnes.

Fury promises Steve that all possible resources will be devoted to finding out more about the Winter Soldier’s current location. Technically, this is true too. Natasha doesn’t say that she knows exactly where Codename: Winter Soldier is currently being stored.

So there are two operations to retrieve the Winter Soldier. There is the first op, where Natasha goes in and kills everyone running the storage facility and then reads the manuals on the equipment to program Alexey.

She brings Codename: Winter Soldier out of cryo, puts him in the chair, follows the procedure and shows the man the pictures of Steve Rogers and Captain America and the Howling Commandos that she brought. She flicks the switches on the old Soviet equipment and waits as the man screams.

She puts him back into cryo.

She calls Steve.

The second op begins when all the bodies are gone and Steve Rogers arrives along with Clint, and Steve’s there to take Alexey in his arms like a joyful version of the Pieta when they open up the cryo pod again.

Steve holds Alexey’s body in his arms, and tears run down his face, and then Alexey opens his eyes and, voice scratchy, says, “Steve?”

Natasha thinks it’s far, far from the worst thing she’s ever done, to take a poor man with a wife dead from his treachery and to make him a hero and best friend to Captain America.

The thing is, Natasha knows how suggestible the human mind is, even without the Red Room’s tools. Memory is so changeable, and humans are all so good at deceiving themselves, and Steve is so patient in helping Bucky to remember. It doesn’t matter to Steve that sometimes Bucky remembers wrong, doesn’t know the punchline to their old jokes, thinks they were both orphans when _his_ parents both lived into the sixties. Steve is so loyal that, truly, none of this matters to him. All he cares about is that Bucky is back, in his apartment sharing a bed with him, eating breakfast and dinner with him, wearing his clothes. Steve comes to work and he smiles, and he hurries home and he watches his TV with his friend and he takes his friend places, all round the city, and he keeps a new picture of Alexey in his wallet. On missions, the Winter Soldier is now Captain America’s guardian angel in the shadows, and Steve is no less courageous but he doesn't run into gunfire any more.

And sometimes his friend stares back at him, when Steve’s standing caught in the light and glowing gold, and who could resist returning Steve’s pure and everlasting love? Natasha programmed him to love Steve, and Steve is easy to love.

It lasts so long, the glory honeymoon days of Steve and Bucky, that Natasha’s almost forgotten to wait for the blow. It comes at last one day when Natasha gets the call—Alexey has vanished from Steve’s apartment, it looks like he’s on the run—but when she finds him by the road outside the city, he’s wearing Steve’s leather jacket. With his hair cut short, he looks more than ever like Bucky. She even sees a glint of a chain around his neck.

She approaches him slowly, carefully, with her gun fixed on him, but this isn’t the Winter Soldier. There’s grief in his eyes.

“You have to do better,” he says.

She tilts her head.

Very slowly, he raises his hand and opens it, letting her keep her gun steady on him. In his silver palm there is a flash drive. “I want this to be the last time,” he says. His hand is shaking just a little. He glances up at the sky, where helicopters are circling. “Steve’s on a mission. We can do this before he gets back.”

Natasha calls down a copter and they take her in along with Alexey, back to SHIELD and then to a Quinjet that Barton flies to a SHIELD warehouse in Iowa. Natasha sits in the back with Alexey, who has his head in his hands. Occasionally he rubs his face.

“Steve will never know,” Natasha says.

“It would kill him, you understand?” Alexey says. He looks at his hands, the one human, the one metal. “It would kill him.”

“He’ll never find out,” Natasha says, and it’s not just a promise, it’s a vow she means to keep.

They take Alexey to the warehouse in Iowa where young SHIELD scientists are taking apart the old Soviet technology they found, where the chair is waiting now, empty. Natasha uses the data he’s compiled on the flash drive to put together a new programming series, a better one. A complete one, with all the little jokes and the secrets Bucky Barnes ought to know by heart.

Alexey goes into the chair voluntarily. Natasha uses the machine. He’s woozy just after the process, so after it’s done Natasha hits him with a hypo and they bundle him back into the Quinjet.

When Steve gets home, he’s mad because Bucky didn’t tell him he was feeling under the weather before Steve left on the mission.

“It’s just a cold, jeez, Steve,” says Bucky, wrestling the box of tissues away from his friend.

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, perching on the side of Bucky’s bed. Gently, he puts his big hand to Bucky’s face. “What do you need?”

“Nothing I haven’t got,” Bucky says, in a breezy tone but with a soft expression on his face. Steve leans in to kiss him.

SHIELD keeps watch on the apartment, just to be sure, but the program should last for at least ten years. In the meantime, Natasha keeps the program data safe, and the files that tell the story of Codename: Winter Soldier, all four men who’ve borne that name, are destroyed and wiped from history. This is the new history that they’ve made, Natasha thinks. A kinder history. Who’s to say it’s not better?

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment!
> 
> Written based on this prompt:  
> http://stevebucky-fest.dreamwidth.org/307.html?thread=823859
> 
> The best thing about this AU is that you can imagine it takes place from Natasha's POV in the background of almost any of your favorite Steve/Bucky MCU fics. Think about that for a second . . .
> 
> Come say hi to me at fmowrites.tumblr.com, and if you found this fic through a rec, please tell me! I love to hear about being recced.
> 
> [ETA: I fixed a few tiny phrasing issues, like literally a couple of words. But if you notice tiny differences between this and the podfic, that's what happened.]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] World of Our Making](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6272113) by [fmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo), [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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